The GB Rowing Team is the high performance arm of British Rowing. Rowing is the nation’s most continuously successful Olympic sport, having won a gold medal in every Olympic Games since 1984, and has won six Paralympic golds since the sport was introduced to the Paralympic Games programme in 2008.

GB Rowing’s Coaching line-up

Jurgen Grobler and Paul Thompson, Chief Coaches for GB Rowing’s senior squads, are to continue in their roles, the ARA has announced today. For British rowing this is a considerable coup in the post-Olympic volatile job market as both are proven, successful medal-winning coaches.

In addition Christian Felkel will join GB Rowing as a High Performance Coach on 13 October to work with the senior men’s squad. Christian is a German National who has been High Performance Director for South African Rowing since 1995. He has been the coach for the South African men’s pair at the past three Olympic Games, winning bronze in Athens in 2004.

Mark Earnshaw and John Keogh move from their roles in GB Rowing’s World Class Start Programme, sponsored by Siemens, to become High Performance Coaches also within the senior programme. Mark has coached the GB men’s double for the past three seasons winning world bronze in 2006 and Olympic bronze in Beijing. John is a former Australian lightweight International and coached the lightweight women’s quad to world bronze in 2005 and 2006, and the women’s eight for the past two seasons winning world bronze in 2007 and a fifth place in Beijing.

Dr Ann Redgrave will become GB Rowing’s first full-time Medical Officer in January. Ann was an Olympian in Los Angeles in 1984 and was Rowing Team Doctor at the Sydney Olympic Games. She has maintained her link with GB Rowing since then as a consultant doctor. She will start her work part-time from November and be responsible for her work to Mark Edgar as Head of the GB Rowing Medical Service.

In a strengthening of GB Rowing’s Under 23 coaching force, Adrian Cassidy and Nick Strange become Performance Coaches for Under 23s and ‘new seniors’. Adrian will work with open men’s squads and moves from his role in World Class Start with a successful track record in Talent Identification and performance. He ‘found’ and first coached GB Rowing’s first World Class Start graduate Olympic medallists, Annie Vernon and Anna Bebington (who won silver and bronze respectively in Beijing) and coached the men’s double to gold at the 2008 U23 World Championships.

Nick has graduated from UK Sport’s Elite Coach Scheme and will continue to work with open women’s squads as he has for the past two seasons, winning bronze in the women’s four each year. Adrian and Nick are both former GB Junior & Senior Internationals.